June 21, 2017
“There is that in me”: On Selves
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) – Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” To say that I’ve been a “private” blogger […]
June 20, 2017
Strippers and Lost Tampons: In Defense of Women’s “Personal” Writing
A New Yorker article recently declared the death of the personal essay, but I won’t be attending the funeral. The article’s author, Jia Tolentino, identifies personal writing with women and […]
June 15, 2017
How to Be an Artist
“Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for plays, paintings, pageants, and scholarly journals, regardless of the works’ attraction or merit. In the words of Citizens Against Government Waste, “actors, […]
June 12, 2017
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Publishing* But Were Afraid to Ask
To writers, editors and agents are like unicorns, magical beasts that hold the key to the publishing kingdom. My writer friends and I spend so much time speculating about these […]
May 24, 2017
On Mutating Into a Mother
This is the third installment of a series on writing and motherhood. Read parts one and two here. When my son was first born, I feared he might be possessed. […]
May 22, 2017
“Verde que te quiero verde”: Poems Written in Green
Living in Western Massachusetts instead of Baltimore this spring, I found myself rooting for the color green like its approach was a spectator sport. Baltimore’s springs arrive comparatively early and […]
May 19, 2017
Carrying Chaos Inside
This is the second installment of a series on writing and motherhood. Read part one one, and part three. Today I told my husband I wanted to find a way […]
May 11, 2017
The Body as Essay (Part 1)
In Ancient Greece they spoke of a wandering womb as the root of hysteria. The uterus is like women; it’s capable of so much but still has to defend itself against […]
May 3, 2017
Margaret Atwood and The Speculative in Poetry
Online and in person, it feels like everyone’s talking about The Handmaid’s Tale, the ten-episode television series based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel of the same name, first published in 1985. […]
April 13, 2017
This marble fact: Jill Alexander Essbaum’s “Easter”
Last year in this same season, I wrote a post titled “You Are Spring,” reflecting on the life, death, and poetry of Patrick Flynn Eckenrode, who, living with severe depression, […]
March 31, 2017
Is it a Reading Exam or a Writing Exam?
At the end of last school year, I was teaching a semester-long course to seniors called The Writing Life, in many ways an extension of the fall semester’s The Writers’ […]
March 16, 2017
Designing Women on Writing (and Teaching)
Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, I sort of thought that I would be a preacher, a plastic surgeon, or a Supreme Court Justice. All of these were concessions, though, after […]